NASA to capture astroids, lunar orbit

NASA plans to lassoo three astroid rocks and place them in Lunar orbit for astronauts to study:

The space agency's plan aims to bring a 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into lunar orbit using a robotic space lasso. Once the asteroid is in
a stable orbit around the moon, astronauts can visit as soon as 2021 using NASA's Orion space capsule and the giant Space Launch System
mega-rocket.

The rocks are chosen among a group of astroids passing Earth/Moon in 2016. And they have already started spendings:

NASA's asteroid-capture mission aims to send astronauts to explore an asteroid by 2025, a space exploration goal set by President Barack Obama in
2010. NASA's 2014 budget plan sets aside $100 million to jump-start the work on the asteroid mission, though the entire project could cost up to $2.6
billion, according to a Keck Institute study.

What will NASA find out from this? I suspect lots of things, like a possibility to study what is normally burnt off when such rocks fall through the
atmosphere. But maybe most of all, the endeavour of making it work itself. It works at that scale, it will possibly work on greater scales too, like
ordering rotation and orbits of bigger objects, like moons and planets....

Nice. Should be cool for NASA, but I am SURE other governments are already looking at this as the next way to have a "natural disaster" event
occur. How convenient to have a few large space rocks at your disposal to throw at whatever country you want to wreak havoc on.

How convenient to have a few large space rocks at your disposal to throw at whatever country you want to wreak havoc on.

Never thought of it that way, but your sentiment rings sense in a way. Looks like when Einstein said his famous line about the war beyond the nuclear
one, they will be armed with sticks and stones. With the rocks now accounted for, would the sticks be rockets?

How convenient to have a few large space rocks at your disposal to throw at whatever country you want to wreak havoc on.

Never thought of it that way, but your sentiment rings sense in a way. Looks like when Einstein said his famous line about the war beyond the nuclear
one, they will be armed with sticks and stones. With the rocks now accounted for, would the sticks be rockets?

Ha. I think Einstein more meant that we would not have anything left but sticks and stones to throw at eachother after a full nuclear world war.

it really looks only like a updated Apollo capsule to me... but the command module (*the section with the solar array) seems to be permanently
attached to the capsule

The ATV-derived service module, sitting directly below Orion’s crew capsule, will provide propulsion, power, thermal control, as well as
supplying water and gas to the astronauts in the habitable module.

Guess that's the answer right there.

And reading on, it's rocket is impressive:

The first test flight of the new rocket, which will be more powerful than NASA's mighty Saturn V moon rocket, is set for
2017.

Nice. Should be cool for NASA, but I am SURE other governments are already looking at this as the next way to have a "natural disaster" event occur.
How convenient to have a few large space rocks at your disposal to throw at whatever country you want to wreak havoc on.

Well, if any of these rocks are Carbonaceous, then that could well result in throwing rocks encrusted, or riddled with diamonds big as your fist.

If Metallic rocks, then, the same would apply for other rare-Earth metals like gold, platinum, iridium, and some other nifty stuff.

There's also the Hydrogen 3 factor.

Additionally, considering these rocks when they typically do enter Earth's Atmosphere naturally burn up for the most part on entry, the attempt at
weaponization could amount more to fireworks display, as opposed to bomb, and, well, the loss of a potentially worthwhile resource.

It'd be a nice way to give your enemies some spending money to fight back with. That's a pretty expensive weapon; the billions spent to capture
something like this, and then the Trillions it'd be worth.
Not exactly the wisest deployment of resources.

Thing is, all this childish nonsense about squabbling over resources will diminish to various degrees once we develop sustainable self maintaining
autonomous colonies on a flatter gravity plane outside of this expensive imprisoning gravity hole we're currently stuck in.

Hollow out a sizable enough Asteroid in the 200km + range, put some spin on it, leave the 'hull' walls around 10 Km thick, put some spin on it enough
for artificial gravity on the inside walls, and you've got realestate enough for Millions that would hold equivalent depth of atmospheric pressure as
Earth, but with much easier access to a flatter, way less expensive gravity plane stocked full to abundance of resources, including water found in icy
bodies, and every other mineral resource, many quite rare on Earth, but abundant in space.

The values of diamonds and gold are way above the actual value if they were priced after abundance. But hey, even I would like to have a 500 carat
diamond sitting on the shelf. Or how about a planet sized one?

Utnapisjtim
NASA plans to lassoo three astroid rocks and place them in Lunar orbit for astronauts to study:

The space agency's plan aims to bring a 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into lunar orbit using a robotic space lasso. Once the asteroid is in a
stable orbit around the moon, astronauts can visit as soon as 2021 using NASA's Orion space capsule and the giant Space Launch System
mega-rocket.

The rocks are chosen among a group of astroids passing Earth/Moon in 2016. And they have already started spendings:

NASA's asteroid-capture mission aims to send astronauts to explore an asteroid by 2025, a space exploration goal set by President Barack Obama in
2010. NASA's 2014 budget plan sets aside $100 million to jump-start the work on the asteroid mission, though the entire project could cost up to $2.6
billion, according to a Keck Institute study.

What will NASA find out from this? I suspect lots of things, like a possibility to study what is normally burnt off when such rocks fall through the
atmosphere. But maybe most of all, the endeavour of making it work itself. It works at that scale, it will possibly work on greater scales too, like
ordering rotation and orbits of bigger objects, like moons and planets....

Studying asteroids is great from both a pure science (How did we get here? Why are we made out of what we're made out of?) standpoint as well as from
a commercial/capitalist standpoint (How can we develop capture technology to exploit the materials in asteroids. What kinds of machinery, heaters and
other stuff will we need to use their wealth?"

So this mission and others like it serve to kill two problems with one stone (pun intended

)

I remember when this mission was first proposed. People on ATS scoffed, "we don't have a shuttle, have to ride to space with (gasp) the Russians and
yet we're going to to fly to an asteroid? why? They're just rocks! Why not a moon base? Why not a mission to Mars?!"

Then this happened.....

And suddenly even the most skeptical realized another reason for such a mission. To learn how to potentially deflect and defend against them....before
they become a real problem.

I didn't realise there were other threads about this, should have done a deeper search I suppose. Sorry that I didn't post in that thread instead.
On the other hand, this should perhaps have been posted in the news section, but I was rather intimidated by all the formatting rules there, so I
posted it here instead.

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